bookstore trials and travails

[bedlamsbard]

I do not think I told you all about my bookstore trauma.

Okay, so on Sunday three of my friends (for reference: Chicago, New York, and Texas. They also have names as well as home states/towns) and I went out for lunch at the Camellia Grill, which is this New Orleans classic fast food restaurant. Bundles of fun -- wait in line for about half an hour (we took shifts going to the Coldstone next door, except for me, if I went to Coldstone I wasn't going to be eating) and then wait inside until you get to sit at the counter and order food. I had a salad and a chocolate freeze. (Okay, I know I sound facetious, but it really was fun.)

Then we took the streetcar to the St. Charles Ave. Borders to hang out. (As my roommate said, "Wait, you're going to a bookstore to hang out?" Me: "Three of us are English majors." "OH.")

I had very definite plans for this trip. I was going to get a book that I had not read before.

I did not buy any books. AT ALL. That I had read before or not. (Look, it's very hard for me to resist buying books that I own but that are at home. I weep. It is very traumatizing.)

I had very definite plans for the kind of book I would buy (well, to be fair, there was actually a specific book I wanted, but they didn't have it, and I think I may just wait until it comes out in paperback next month). High fantasy. Adventure. Action. Bundles of fun. (Basically, um, what I write.)

Like I said, I didn't buy any books. (I'm still trying to work out why I didn't buy either of the two new books by two of my favorite YA authors, especially since I haven't read them yet, or the book by another of my favorite YA authors that I've read but don't own. Apparently I was only in the mood for adult fantasy?)

I did pick up Chronicles of the Black Company and carry it around for about an hour, because hey, it looked exactly like my sort of thing! "Vietnam war fiction on peyote"! Hardbitten mercenaries in a fantasy land! (The Red Company is not based on the Black Company. I have never read the Black Company books. I will get into the Westria drama in a minute.)

Then I read about the first 10 pages and realized that I couldn't stand the author's writing style.

I am very, very picky about writing style. VERY picky. There are only a handful of authors I read regularly: Dennis Lehane, Carol O'Connell, S.M. Stirling, George R.R. Martin, Diana Gabaldon, Scott Lynch, Naomi Novik (god, for another book I didn't buy, Victory of Eagles. I'm waiting for the paperback, although I should add that she doesn't rank as high up on this list as the others), Mercedes Lackey, Tamora Pierce, Robin McKinley, Diana Wynne Jones. I occasionally break out of this group -- I love The Terror by Dan Simmons, but I've never read anything else he's written. Of these writers, only three are high fantasy (in the adult section, not YA. The tone's different. Bear with me here): Martin, Lynch, and Lackey (and actually, let me clarify even more: my interest in high fantasy Lackey is very limited at the moment to Lackey and Mallory's Obsidian Mountain Trilogy, even though I've read almost all the rest of her stuff). The other writer I've been reading a lot of lately is Stirling (I love Stirling, oh my God. STIRLING).

It takes a lot for me to pick up a book by a new author. A lot. And even then, it doesn't take much for me to put it down again. Occasionally I will slog through something if it's come especially highly recommended.

My beloved S.M. Stirling recommended Diana L. Paxson's Westria books, so when I found The Golden Hills of Westria at Goodwill, I pounced on it eagerly. Let me just say, the only reason I slogged through it and read it as quickly as I did was so I could finish it before I left the state of Washington and I wouldn't have to bring it to Louisiana. Originally, I also wanted to read it because the blurb on the back reminded me of, um, a certain personal canon for a certain High King of Narnia. Crown prince! Kidnapped! Lost his memory! Traveling with an army that's marching on his native land!

I was abruptly reminded why I don't venture outside of my comfort zone while reading. (Over break, I also read The Privilege of the Sword, since Ellen Kushner was being recommended all over LJ a few years ago and whatever, the library had it. I did not hate it. I also did not particularly give a damn about it.)

I am still kind of shocked about the fact I couldn't find a single book to buy. (I looked at Robin Hobb, since I actually do own a couple of Hobb books, I just haven't read them since I, uh, own the second books from two separate trilogies. One was from Goodwill and one was from St. Vince's? I still didn't buy any, since they were in first person and it takes a lot for me to read first person. Lehane and Gabaldon are exceptions.) Apparently I am just that picky of a reader. It's just that all the high fantasy looked boring, or cliched, or I have been warned off the authors, or just that I couldn't stand the writing style. And I am kind of sick of urban fantasy. (And there are very few alternate history writers I will read. The list pretty much begins and ends with S.M. Stirling. I can't stand Turtledove -- writing style, again. Wait, that's a lie, there have been a couple others that are all right over the years, but I don't love them with an undying passion I do Stirling.)

Either this is a sign that I am far too picky a reader, or I need to start writing my own damn fantasy. Which I have been thinking of, and I unfortunately appear to be combining Criminal Minds, The Unit, and (my) Narnia in a high fantasy 'verse. *considers* No named characters yet, but there's an Edmund-based character and a Reid-based character, along with vague formless shapes of the rest of the team. (It's basically a fantasy special forces unit, except they're all human. For now.) Also a Peter-like character, but he's not part of the team; he's the king. (Actually, in retrospect, this may be what my Narnia would have become if the Pevensies had lived out the Golden Age and the Dying Times had never come.) Also, there is a version of the Red Company.

So that was my bookstore drama, in a rambling sort of way.

Also, my friends and I got asked if we knew where to get weed in New Orleans. Now that was funny.

At some point in the future I will do a rec post of authors that have influenced the Warsverse and Dust (my reference novels. I actually can pretty much pick them out of a line-up).

Comments

[caramelsilver.livejournal.com]

I'm very much looking forward to that rec post. I have to say though, besides Lynch I have never heard of any of the authors you talked about... Stirling? What's his books about?

And for the record? I will be very willing to buy any book you write=)

And ooh! Look at my new Susan icon! Isn't it pretty?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

S.M. Stirling. He writes alternate history...of a sort. Probably the biggest influence on Dust are his Change novels, where in March of 1998 electricity, guns, a lot of stuff, just stops working and society collapses. A new world out of the ruins of the old...

And he writes fantastic action. Like, fabulous action.

PRETTY.

[caramelsilver.livejournal.com]

Oooh! That sounds awesome! Could you link me to the books in question? (According to wiki he has written a lot of books...)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*clears throat* Okay, this is actually three separate sets of trilogies. The first set are Island in the Sea of Time (http://www.amazon.com/Island-Sea-Time-S-Stirling/dp/0451456750/ref=pd_bbs_sr_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232578680&sr=8-7), Against the Tide of Years (http://www.amazon.com/Against-Tide-Years-S-Stirling/dp/0451457439/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b), and On the Oceans of Eternity (http://www.amazon.com/Oceans-Eternity-S-M-Stirling/dp/0451457803/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b), which take place on the island of Nantucket, swept back in time three thousand years. (You do not have to read the Islander novels in order to understand the Change novels; they were written first, and the Change novels are the flipside, what happened back in the present day.)

The Change novels are the ones I was talking about up above. The first trilogy is Dies the Fire (http://www.amazon.com/Dies-Fire-Change-S-M-Stirling/dp/0451460413/ref=pd_sim_b_4), The Protector's War (http://www.amazon.com/Protectors-War-Novel-Change/dp/0451460774/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b), and A Meeting at Corvallis (http://www.amazon.com/Meeting-at-Corvallis-S-M-Stirling/dp/B000R7O2QY/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b). The second trilogy (okay, quartet, but only two of the books are out now) takes place twenty-four years after Dies the Fire and the books out now are The Sunrise Lands (http://www.amazon.com/Sunrise-Lands-Novel-Change/dp/B001OMHSVC/ref=pd_sim_b_2) and The Scourge of God (http://www.amazon.com/Scourge-God-Novel-Change/dp/0451462289/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_c).

And I'm noticing now that Amazon has a lot of the books at bargain prices, which is making me twitch because I only have four of them with me here....

Anyway, I love Stirling, a lot, and while he's a little weak on character (his main characters tend to be very strong, the secondary ones tend to fall back on stereotypes and cliches), he's very good at plot, worldbuilding, and action. He's a very large influence on my writing.

He's also known for writing a lot of alternate history. The Sky People (http://www.amazon.com/Sky-People-S-M-Stirling/dp/0765353768/ref=pd_bbs_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232578680&sr=8-11) and In the Courts of Crimson Kings (http://www.amazon.com/Courts-Crimson-Kings-S-M-Stirling/dp/0765314894/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b) are sci-fi adventure in the best tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars and Venus novels, alternate histories in which Mars and Venus both bear sentient life, while Conquistador (http://www.amazon.com/Conquistador-Alternate-History-S-M-Stirling/dp/0451459334/ref=pd_bbs_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232578680&sr=8-12) takes place in our Earth...where a certain group of families has discovered a portal to an alternate Earth where Europe never colonized America (I think the specific inciting incident is that Alexander the Great lived to a ripe old age), and The Peshawar Lancers (http://www.amazon.com/Peshawar-Lancers-S-M-Stirling/dp/0451458737/ref=pd_sim_b_5) takes place in an Earth where a string of asteroids hit Earth sometime during the Victorian Age and the British Empire relocated to India. A century or so later, they're still pretty damn Victorian...

He's an amazing adventure writer, in the best tradition of H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs (I am really showing my literary roots here, in case anyone's wondering where I came at my love of writing action/adventure), and also very, very tongue-in-cheek on occasion. (Witness in the Change novels: the Dunedain Rangers. No, really. And it's actually plausible!)

I recommend him whole-heartedly. (If you're looking for him in a bookstore, he'll be in the fantasy/sci-fi section, although there's not actually that much fantasy/sci-fi involved, except on occasion.) One of my favorite fight scenes in fiction is from Dies the Fire.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

My recommendation for you: Sara Douglass' The Troy Game. Don't bother with her Axis and Wayfarer books (well, you can, they're fun, in a standard epic fantasy kind of way), go straight to the head-trippy historio-fantasy with incredibly twisty plots and lots of violence and betrayal. You might also like her Crucible trilogy, wot is set in mostly-12th-century Europe, with some borrowings from the 14th.

I'm not sure what it is you prize in writing style, but I've never read anything like Douglass' style in the Troy Game and Crucible series(es).

[caramelsilver.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Dude, those amazon prizes are nice! Like, that's half of what I have to pay for a normal paperback here at home!

I'll write down the titles and look for them the next time I'm at the bookstore=)=)

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

Have you used your amazon gift card yet?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

As one can tell, I, uh, really like Stirling.

Start with the Islander books; they're the earliest. The Change novels and the two sci-fi ones are the most recent.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

No! I am having my usual trouble with gift cards: so much stuff! What to get? *debates* (I have Barnes & Noble and Target gift cards from my mother too. And iTunes ones, but those went fast: I spent it all on Heather Alexander.)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Douglass I have heard of but haven't read. Possibly I have had them anti-recced to me. (Anti-rec being...DO NOT READ THESE.) *checks* Yeah, I have, which is one of the reasons I haven't read them. Hmmm. I think my library at home has them, so I'll check them out there, probably.

As an English major (*rolls eyes*) I should probably be able to articulate exactly what it is I prize in writing style. Key word being probably. (I didn't like Guy Gavriel Kay; I'm not sure how much of that was writing style and how much of it was pacing. Too florid. Glen Cook, though, from the ten or so pages of I read of him, was the opposite: not enough. My own style probably falls closer to Stirling and Lackey.)

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

If the Axis/Wayfarer books were anti-recc'd, that makes sense. The first half of the six, published in Aus. as the Axis Trilogy, is half decent, but by the time she whacked another three on and called them the Wayfarer Series, the total was a lot less decent.

The Crucible and Troy Game are both very... confronting, shall we say. Both need specs with warnings for violence and rape, as I recall. The Crucible took me AGES to get through because the main character was so convincingly misogynistic I felt ILL. Until he got his comeuppance in book three or so, that is.

If you're such a style snob, I am amused that you read T.Pierce... ;)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I think the Wayfarer ones are the ones which were anti-recced.

Pierce and Lackey imprinted on me before I got to be such a style snob. (And if you've never read early Lackey, well...yeah. Later Lackey, especially the ones where she's co-writing, is pretty good, though.)

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

I ROUSINGLY anti-rec the last three books of what's published in the states as the Wayfarer six-part series. The first three, the Axis trilogy, are good if... fairly generic fantasy. The later three are interesting ONLY for the way they develop one particular character. I have her next book set in that world, but I'm kind of scared to read it. Her writing's got a lot better so hopefully she can absolve herself.

I think I've only read Lackey once, and it was a co-written, not that I can remember what it was.
Pierce is love :D.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Lackey's early stuff is, well...it has its points. It also has its faults. Then again, you have to remember that I was around, oh, 9 or 10 when I started reading it, probably. (Maybe a little younger or a little older. I know I'd definitely been reading it in 2000-2001, but I don't remember when I started precisely.) With Pierce I was younger, but I'm not sure by how much.

...I feel old. *headdesk*

[realpestilence.livejournal.com]

I'd love to rec something for you; but you have such ah...*specific* tastes that I'm afraid you wouldn't like whatever I thought of. :D

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I am, uh, kind of a tough person to rec stuff too. (Sometimes it works out; Lynch I read after he was vigorously recced all over the place by a lot of people. Most of the time it does not. I'm not sure exxactly when I got this picky.)

um, hi?

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, I'm a lurker who enjoys your fic. I thought I'd just rec some books you might want to check out. If you like alternate history, you might want to check out Eric Flint's 1632 (When a cosmic accident transports a West Virginia community back in time and space to 17th-century Thuringia, the citizens of Grantville find themselves thrust into the midst of the bloody and savage conflict that history books would call the Thirty Years War. Surrounded by warring armies and burdened by the prospect of diminishing resources, Grantville residents, under the leadership of a council that includes a union leader, a doctor, and a teacher, proceed to turn their new world upside down, beginning the American Revolution a century and a half before its time.)

Or, if you'd prefer somewhat more realistic alternate history, 1812: Rivers of Glory is also excellent (Flint's new alternate-history saga explores the possibility that the Trail of Tears never occurred by depicting a thoroughly different War of 1812. It begins with Andrew Jackson's campaign against the Creeks, in which the Cherokees fought on Jackson's side. Young Sam Houston, an adopted Cherokee, and Patrick Driscol, an Irish rebel and Napoleonic Wars veteran, are sent to Washington, arriving just before the British do. Though Flint does not eliminate the "battle" of Bladensburg (alas!), his British don't burn Washington and never get to Fort McHenry. They do get to New Orleans, however, where, despite a more intelligent plan of attack than Pakenham actually used, Jackson repels them with the aid of some free black naval gunners, the Cherokees, Houston, and Driscol. And Flint's Pakenham survives.)

Flint's style can be a bit much in 1632, but after that he has co-authors and he keeps a much tighter leash on himself. 1812 is the better first book- not surprising as he did write it after 1632. But I highly recommend both series.

Re: um, hi?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I have actually read 1632! Ages ago, when it first came out. Although I haven't read the sequels, I don't think. (Island in the Sea of Time, by S.M. Stirling -- it's linked a couple of posts up -- has a similar premise, but Stirling does more world-building than Flint does, and I came at the Flint after I'd already read the Stirling. Although I should read it again, when I get home.)

And I actually own 1812 -- well, my dad does, which is pretty much the same thing -- I just haven't read it.

(My favorite Flint books are the two books he co-wrote with Mercedes Lackey and Dave Freer, The Shadow of the Lion and This Rough Magic. Now that's historical fantasy... *happy sigh*)

Thank you for the recs! (And really, I do not bite. Lurkers welcome! Most of my fannish career has been spent in lurking.)

[pcan.livejournal.com]

Chima's Heir series for YA is pretty good - the first is the Warrior Heir. My friends and I all loved it

[miss-beth-o.livejournal.com]

Allow me to gush about Lian Hearn's Tales of the Otori. If you've had it anti-rec'd, then someone was experiencing temporary insanity. These books (Across the Nightingale Floor, Grass for His Pillow, and Brilliance of the Moon, as well as the wrap-up, Harsh Cry of the Heron) are as wonderful as the titles. Fake ancient Japan, shadowy ninja-like society of warriors with supernatural skills, fighting among warlords, a little non-flowery, almost-doomed romance, a little hidden-and-doomed romance in the background, fighting priests, and wicked cool stuff like nightingale floors and possesion by the spirit of a cat are just a few of the things that might interest you. I haven't read the final book, a prequel called Heaven's Net is Wide, but it is on my shelf and waiting.

I can't really compare writing styles, as I haven't read much by the writers you listed, but I do love Robin McKinley and I love Lia Hearn for some of the same reasons. I know what you mean about too-much/not-enough on the description. There's a lot of purple prose in fantasy, but Hearn stayed away from it, mostly by treating it as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening, even when it got crazy. He seemed to nail the "this has been translated from a foreign language" voice even though it's not. He did move from Australia to Japan for a good amount of time for research and language study, and you can tell. He switches back and forth between a first-person POV on his main male character and a third-person POV on his main female character, which I didn't even notice at first (I read too fast for my own good) but loved even more after I realized it.

Now I want to re-read them all, but alas cannot, as I have class in fifty minutes and must spend the next fifteen weeks finishing my novel draft, revising the first 150 pages for my thesis, and re-reading books I didn't like the first time for my novel workshop. (That's what I get for taking the same instructor three times, but she's the only one, and the workshop makes up for it.)

Cheers, and I hope you find *something* good to read!

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I think I have seen those in the bookstore...

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Hmm. *checks Amazon* It's harder for me to tell if I like something with first person, but the first couple pages look fairly good.

It looks interesting! Despite my usual dismay about stuff set in anything like Japan (half-Japanese. My parents raised me on medievalesque Europe-ish stuff -- plus all the Greek myths -- and it shows), I will look at it. Thank you for the rec!

Good luck with the workload, that sounds like a lot...